LANcom Technology Blog

Do you have a PowerPoint presentation you would like to share with others online? Here’s 3 free ways you can go about it.

1. SlideShare – SlideShare a website that allows you to upload and share your slideshow presentations in a number of ways. You can share your slideshow publically through the site, privately with a secret URL, or privately thought email invites. You can also embed SlideShare presentations within your website. To learn more about SlideShare click here.

    

2. Zentation – Zentation is an online tool which allows you to sync your PowerPoint slides with video, simulating the experience of being at a live presentation. With this tool your audience will be able to watch a video of you presenting while being able to easily see your slides at the same time. You can share your Zentation presentation by either giving out the link to it on the Zentation site, or by embedding the player within your own site. To find out more about Zentation click here.

    

3. PowerPoint 2010 – If you have PowerPoint 2010, you have the ability to broadcast a presentation live on the web. PowerPoint can provide you with a link which you can then send to those you would like to watch your presentation. Everyone who clicks on this link will be able to see your slide show in their browser as you move through your slides. To see a video of how the broadcast feature in PowerPoint 2010 works click here.

If you ever try to send an email only to have it bounce because the attachment is too large, YouSendIt is a great way to quickly get around this. YouSendIt is an online tool which allows you to upload a file and then send an email with a link to that file, all from the homepage of their site.

How does it work?

All you need to do is enter your email address, enter your recipients address, select the file you want to send, enter a subject and message (optional), and click Send IT. YouSentIT will then securely store your file and email your recipient a download link.

The free version of YouSendIt allows you to send files up to 100MB and will store your files for 7 days, so the recipient has a chance to download it.

YouSendIt also has pro and business plans with additional features like storage of files up to 2GB, control of the expiration date of files, and tracking of when files have been downloaded and by whom. If you would like to learn more about YouSendIt or try it out yourself click here.

Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 is a free data analysis add-in that allows you to manipulate and analyse large sets of data, from multiple sources, with ease. As a business intelligence application, PowerPivot integrates with many data sources to help you gain better business insights.

So what can you do with Microsoft PowerPivot?

1. Work with 100s of millions of rows of data – The PowerPivot add-in allows you to work with much more data than you could with just Excel.
2. Pull data from multiple sources and combine them – With PowerPivot you can import data from almost anywhere including relational databases, multidimensional sources, cloud services, data feeds, Excel files, text files, and the web.
3. Create relationships between the imported data and analyse it using familiar Excel tools – PowerPivot allows you to easily create relationships and analyse all your data using the tools you already know like PivotTables, PivotCharts, and slicers.
4. Use new DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) Formulas– The new DAX formulas in PowerPivot are specifically optimized for business intelligence use.
5. Publish to SharePoint – If you use SharePoint 2010 you can publish your analysis so others in your organisation can see it and to continue to slice and dice the data.

Here at LANcom we use PowerPivot to analyse data pulled from our professional services automation system and our IT monitoring software, and we have found it to be very useful.

For the best results when using PowerPivot you will need the 64-bit version of Excel 2010, but it is still possible to use it with the 32-bit version. If you would like to learn more about PowerPivot click here to visit the website.

Want to edit an image for free but need more functionality than what’s available in Microsoft Paint? There are actually a number of great programs you can download for free. Here are 3 that I have found useful.

GIMP – GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and is a free alternative to Photoshop. If you’re looking for a program with a lot of features then this is the one for you. The only downside is that it can take a while to learn how to use it. To visit the GIMP download page for Windows click here, for Mac click here.

Paint.net – Paint.net is like a more advanced vision of Microsoft Paint. It’s powerful, with many of the features you find in software like Photoshop, yet is simple enough to be easy to use. Paint.net also has a great online community, which makes learning how to use it and asking questions much easier. To learn more about the features of Paint.net click here. To visit the download page click here.

Photoscape – If you’re looking for a tool that will let you do all the really fun stuff easily then Photoscape is the tool for you. As the name suggests, Photoscape is designed for working with photos and it has a huge number of effects you can apply to them. To check out Photoscape and see all the interesting things you can do with your photos click here.

Like to learn about other free image editing tools? Click here to read a MakeUseOf article.

Ever been sent a link by someone and not been sure if it’s safe? Or maybe you want to buy something from a website but want to make sure it’s the real deal before you give them your credit card number. Here are three websites that can help you answer the question ‘Is this website safe?’

1. Norton Safe Web – Norton Safe Web allows you to enter a URL and receive a report on the safety of that site. Norton Safe Web will let you know if there are any specific threats present and will grade the site as either Safe, Caution, or Warning. It also allows users to place reviews, so if someone else has had a bad experience you’ll know about it. To try out Norton Safe Web click here.

    

2. McAfee SiteAdviser – McAfee SiteAdviser can also grade a websites based on how safe it is, but goes one step further and lists all the external sites your site links to and whether they are safe as well. It also allows users to place reviews and even gives you an indication of how popular the websites is. To visit McAfee SiteAdviser click here.

    

3. Online Link Scan – Online Link Scan is a free tool that uses a number of other services to see if a link it safe. It compiles the results of Phishtank, AVG, SiteTruth, and Google Safe Browsing engines to give you a quick overview of whether a site looks safe or not. To see what Online Link Scan has to say click here

As well as being a great way to test a link before you visit it, these websites can also be used to make sure your own website has not been infected with Malware.

Hat tip to MakeUseOf for the idea for this post

Ever really needed to edit or create an Office document, but didn’t have access to a computer with Office? Microsoft has just released Office Web Apps on SkyDrive, which means you can now edit and create Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files for free from any computer connected to the internet.

These free versions have limited functionality, so they are not designed to replace Office on your desktop, but having the option to edit anytime and anywhere definitely makes working with these files more convenient.

The applications in Office Web Apps use a ribbon interface just like Office 2007, so if you are familiar with this you shouldn’t have any problems learning how to use it.

So what can you do with Office Web Apps?
There are no SmartArt tools and tools for working with pictures and tables are very limited, but all the basics are there. Office Web Apps also allows co-authoring in Excel and OneNote, which means you can work together with others on files at the same time.

How do you sign up?
Web Apps work as a part of SkyDrive, Microsoft’s free online file storage, which allows you to store up to 25GB of files. To use SkyDrive all you need is a Windows Live ID, so if you have a hotmail account you can use this or you can sign up for a Windows Live ID here.

Once you have a Windows Live ID you just need to click here and sign in to access your SkyDrive account. From here you will be able to upload Office files for editing or create new ones.

If you would like to read more about Office Web Apps from The Windows Blog click here.

Do you have a link you would like post and share online, but would like only certain people to be able to access it? Trick.ly is a website that shortens and password protects links so that anyone trying to access them has to accurately answer a question before being taken to the URL.

Say for example you want to post a link on Facebook, but only want close friends to be able to access it. With a Trick.ly shortened link, anyone who clicked on the link would have to accurately answer a question you created before they could get to the website.

To visit the Trick.ly site and try it out for yourself click here.

Hat tip to Seth for the idea for this post

Need to collaborate with others from different locations to create a document? Sync.in is a free realtime document conferencing tool that allows you to quickly and easily create text documents with others.

Here’s how it works

1. No sign up - No sign up is required to use Sync.in, you just need to click the Create a new note button on homepage. Sync.in will then open a new document with a unique URL which you can send to those you would like to collaborate with.
2. Different colours for different users - Each user has their own colour so you can see who is writing what and all edits appear instantly on everyone’s screen.
3. Discuss changes with the chat feature – There is a chat box to the right of the document which lets users talk things out as they are editing the document.
4. Review what changes have been made – Sync.in records all the action as it happens, so if you want to review the evolution of your document you can. To view an animation of all edits over time you just need to click on the Time Slider button.
5. Save multiple versions – You can save what has been written as a new version at anytime. You can also name each version so you can easily find previous revisions.
6. Export the document – When you are done with editing you can then export what you have created as a text or Html file.

If you really like the idea of Sync.in but would like to have your session protected by password and to take place over an encrypted SSL (secure socket layer) there is a Pro Version which can do this. This costs $2 US per user per month, but it’s free for the first 30 days.

If you would like to try out Sync.in for yourself click here

Hat tip to MakeUseOf for the idea for this post

Evernote is a powerful free tool which allows you to save and manage the information you find both on and off the web. Whether you are researching for a project and need to compile information from many sources or you just want a way to store and remember random but important details Evernote can help you do this.

Here’s how it works:

1. You create a Notebook for each of your projects and within each Notebook you add multiple Notes.

    

2. A Note could be: a text note you type, a clip of information from a webpage, an entire webpage, a photo, or a screenshot

    

3. You can add notes by: putting them directly to Evernote, highlighting information on a webpage and clicking the Evernote Web Clipper on your internet browser, or by emailing them to you unique Evernote email address.

    

4. Everything you add to Evernote is instantly processed, indexed, and made searchable so you easily find it when you need it. If you want to you can also add titles and tags to notes to make them even easier to find.

    

5. You also have the option to share a notebook with others meaning you can collaborate on compiling information.

    

6. Perhaps the most impressive feature of Evernote is its ability to read text within pictures (OCR). This feature means that you can take photos of text you see out in the real world, send them to your Evernote account, and then at a later date be able to easily find them. For example, you could take a photo of a bottle of wine you liked with your phone, email it to Evernote, and then the when you wanted to remember the brand name just search for the type of wine and Evernote will bring up the picture.

Here’s a YouTube video of how Evernote works.

If you would like to visit the Evernote website and try it out for yourself Click here.

Want to create a Flash website really easily? Wix is a free online tool that allows you to create a Flash website without the technical skills. With Wix all you need to do is choose from one of their 271 templates and then use the drag and drop interface to edit it to your liking.

There are a lot of things you can do with Wix including adding galleries, videos, motion effects and much more. Another good thing about Wix websites is that they’re search engine friendly because behind each Wix creation there is Html code.

One downside to the free version of Wix is that it will add a small ad to the bottom of your site stating ‘This website was created using Wix.com’. The editor can also take awhile to learn how to use.

If you would like to visit the Wix website and try it out for yourself click here.

If you are interested in finding out about a really easy to use online tool for creating Html websites click here to learn about Weebly.

Hat tip to MakeUseOf for the idea for this post.